Teen Pregnancy

A new kind of oral contraception - talk -- could be the best method for keeping Carroll teens from getting pregnant, said the woman leading a state-funded program here."

It takes two to get a teenage girl pregnant, yet most health and public policy focuses on her. The theory is that if she can be motivated to delay sexual activity or to protect herself with birth control, the problem of teen pregnancy will disappear. The biology is correct, but the policy isn't. Especially when the evidence shows that boys feel more pressure to have sex than girls, are less protected by parents, become sexually active earlier, report more embarrassment about being known as a virgin, have sex more often, have more partners, and are notoriously poor users of the health care delivery system.

For years, the school-based health clinics of St. Paul, Minn., were touted as a success. They nipped teen pregnancy in the bud, claimed proponents -- and those reports influenced the growth of school-based clinics in cities across the country.But a study released yesterday says the clinics never accomplished what they set out to.In fact, say researchers, teen birthrates in St. Paul schools have not declined in the 20 years since the clinics opened. At one school, birthrates actually rose.

News that the unmarried teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, is five months pregnant has sparked a media storm to match Hurricane Gustav's disruption of the GOP convention this week. Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain insists the pregnancy of 17-year-old Bristol Palin is a private family matter. But it raises legitimate questions about Governor Palin's forceful support for abstinence-only sex education policies, as well as the vetting process that led Mr. McCain to choose a running mate with one of the slimmest resumes for high office in recent memory.

WASHINGTON -- Positive peer pressure from close friends is helping teens avoid risky sexual behavior, according to reports issued today on Capitol Hill.Rates of pregnancy, birth and abortion continue to drop among teens, according to a 50-state report released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of New York.The institute reported these national trends for 1996 among women ages 15 to 19:* Pregnancy rates fell 4 percent from 1995, to 97 per 1,000 women.* Birth rates also fell 4 percent, to 54 per 1,000.

After giving birth, a 19-year-old Baltimore resident headed to Planned Parenthood and got her first injection of the contraceptive Depo-Provera. One year later, she "likes Depo because I don't have time to remember to take the pill."This young mother is one of the many teens who are finding Depo-Provera a more convenient, more reliable method of birth control. In fact, family planning counselors say the reason teen pregnancy rates have dropped in both Baltimore and the nation is due, in part, to Depo-Provera.

Maybe the teen-age girl has an upset stomach that she believes is morning sickness, or she notices another telltale sign. She's scared, and she goes to a clinic for a pregnancy test.The girl is like thousands of other high-risk teen-agers who had been regarded as almost impossible to identify, let alone reach with advice and counseling intended to keep them from becoming mothers too soon.Researchers now say that first pregnancy test, administered at the school or community clinic, presents a key opportunity to intervene.

TIPTON, Ind. -- The seat of Tipton County has a picturesque stone courthouse, a middle-income, church-going population, a small-town friendliness -- and a teen pregnancy rate that rivals Baltimore's.As members of the Teen Pregnancy Coalition formed two years ago to fight the problem, they adopted a theory that's discussed more and more: Americans have become too accepting of high-school motherhood."The overreaction was dad standing in the doorway and the girl in rags shivering in the cold with her baby," says Mark Anderson, associate pastor of Tipton's West Street Christian Church.

It is no longer teenagers stumbling into pregnancy and parenthood about whom we should be fretting. Those numbers continue to drop, because the kids are having less sex and using more contraception. No, it is the 20-something women who are putting babies before marriage at a frightening rate - and not because they don't know any better. They are sure the good man and the picket fence are out of reach, but they still want children. Why wait for what they don't think will happen? That's the picture painted by a new study, "Knot Yet: The benefits and costs of delayed marriage in America," prepared by researchers at the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the Relate Institute.

A report released last week reveals that most of us believe only teens from poor or single-parent families get pregnant. And we are wrong. According to research conducted for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 28 percent of those who report having given birth or fathered a child as a teen lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line. And just 30 percent of those who report having given birth to or fathered a child as a teen say they were living with a single parent.